


Long Summers

by startwearingpurple



Series: Rose Weasley: Bounty Hunter [14]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23287678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startwearingpurple/pseuds/startwearingpurple
Summary: A little prequel one-shot of Teddy and Victoire, who were best friends and one day realized they were in love.
Relationships: Teddy Lupin/Victoire Weasley
Series: Rose Weasley: Bounty Hunter [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/442378
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	Long Summers

Year 1

“If you could look like anyone, who would you look like?”

Teddy Lupin was stretched out on his belly in the warm grass with his chin propped up on his hands, side by side with Victoire Weasley, in the back gardens at her grandparents’ house. The sun was high overhead, the August heat almost suffocating in its intensity. Teddy, about to head off to his first year at Hogwarts while Victoire still had one more year of full childhood ahead of her, was feeling a little insecure.

Victoire pursed her lips thoughtfully. “What about Uncle Harry? You could make yourself look like him.”

Teddy shook his head. His godfather was a lot to live up to already. “Nuh-uh.”

“How about your dad?”

Teddy shrugged a bit. “I already look like him without trying. Just the hair is a little different.”

Victoire looked annoyed that he had shot down both of her suggestions. “Well I don’t know, Teddy. Who do you want to look like?”

He didn’t know, but felt he should. He was about to go to Hogwarts - oughtn’t he to know his best look by now? Eleven felt so old, when you were surrounded by seven year olds and toddlers. Victoire, closest to him in age, always felt something of a relief when he visited the Burrow. Here there was always a gaggle of small children, the Weasley grandchildren dashing about madly in a cloud of shrieking chaos. Victoire was an oasis of calm in the madness. At home, Teddy was an only child, living alone with his grandmother. It was quiet, calm, and a little boring. Visiting the Weasleys and Potters felt a bit like going to the zoo, with Victoire the only other human around.

The younger kids were running about the lawn, screaming their heads off in some demented game of tag. Victoire had been refereeing before Teddy arrived, but as always she’d abandoned the game to sit with him for a chat.

“I wish you didn’t have to go to school,” she said then, and he looked over at her.

He wished that a bit, too. “I wish you were going too this year.” He wouldn’t feel so lonely without his best friend.

“I asked my dad if they ever let people go early, but he said no.” She looked a little despondent, and Teddy hurried to cheer her up.

“So what should I look like? Should I do my nose differently?” He screwed up his face in concentration, and his nose changed shape, becoming a bulbous shape that usually made her laugh.

But Victoire didn’t laugh this time. She heaved a sigh and said, “Just be you, Teddy.”

And with that, she jumped to her feet and went back to the game of tag.

***

Year 2

This time, instead of feeling like the world was pressing down on him until he couldn’t breathe, Teddy was overjoyed for the end of August.

This time, Victoire was coming too.

She was skipping around the gardens at the Burrow with her brand-new wand in hand, waving it around as she sang out nonsense words, pretending to cast spells. Teddy, feeling both elated to have his best friend along and superior because he knew actual spells and she didn’t, was grinning while he watched her, perched cross-legged on top of a picnic table.

“I can’t wait to show you round the train, and the castle, and the Quidditch pitch, just wait Victoire-”

She gave a twirl. “And you can teach me all the spells you learned last year-”

“And I’ll introduce you to my friends, you can be in Hufflepuff with me-”

At this, Victoire drew to an abrupt halt, her eyes going wide. “Ooh, Teddy, what if I’m in Gryffindor? Everyone in my family was in Gryffindor.”

Teddy had not really considered this. He was in Hufflepuff, Victoire was his best friend, of course she would go to Hufflepuff. But it was true, all the Weasleys that he knew of had been in Gryffindor. 

“Gryffindor is okay too,” he said robustly, so she wouldn’t think he would be disappointed in her. “Any of them are okay. You’ll be there, that’s the important thing.”

Victoire smiled. “Yeah. Ooh, it’ll be fun. Just you wait, Teddy. I’m going to learn _everything_ about magic.”

Teddy grinned back at her. “Me too. We can learn it together.”

She hopped up on the picnic table next to him. “I wish we could be in classes together. Will you be my study partner? You can help me with homework.”

“Yeah.” Teddy preened a bit at his status as the older, wiser half of their friendship duo. “I can help you with your homework whenever you need it.”

She threw one arm around his shoulders. “I can’t wait!”

“What shall I look like on the train platform, so you can recognize me?” he asked cheerfully. All last year, he had changed his appearance as a joke, a prank, a stunt - entertaining his fellow students. He wondered what he could do to top all that to impress Victoire.

“Just yourself,” she said, and hopped off the table to go back to prancing about with her wand and pretend spells.

***

Year 3

“Why are you making your hair look like that?” Victoire asked. They were sitting on the beach near her family’s house in Tinworth, on a blanket her mother had conjured, sharing sandwiches and crisps. Victoire’s younger siblings were running around the sand and shoving each other into the water while her mother watched. Victoire, now twelve, thought she was too old for that. Especially when she was next to thirteen year old Teddy, who was definitely too old for that sort of thing.

She sort of wished they weren’t too old, though. Something about being halfway out of childhood, but not out yet, made the thought of it uncomfortable. She didn’t know why. But she didn’t want her sister pushing her into the water in front of Teddy, despite how he had made his hair look.

Teddy ran a hand through his hair. It was a shockingly bright shade of purple at the moment. “Why, doesn’t it look all right?”

She shrugged. “I suppose. I like the turquoise better. This makes you look peaky.”

“Huh.” Teddy finished chewing his sandwich, looking thoughtful, then concentrated. She could always tell when he was changing something, since he looked like he was trying to hold back a sneeze. A moment later, Teddy’s hair shifted into turquoise.

Victoire looked at him, then went back to her sandwich.

“Should I change my nose, do you think?” he asked.

She shrugged again. “If you want to.”

Teddy got a little annoyed. “Just tell me how I should look, Victoire.”

“Why can’t you just look like yourself?”

“Well, what would you look like, if you could change to anyone?” He didn’t know why he asked her this any more, since she never answered to his satisfaction.

“I would look like myself,” she told him. When he could actually pin her down with an answer to that question, that was the only one she ever gave.

He snorted, and then concentrated again. His hair turned back to purple. He went back to his sandwich.

A moment later, Victoire said, “You still look peaky.”

***

Year 4

At fourteen, Teddy felt himself to be a man of the world. The younger Weasley kids all looked up to him, the Potters idolized him, and adults had started talking to him as if he had some sense. He was definitely an experienced man of action.

Except when it came to a cross Victoire. Then he felt like a worm and had no idea what to do to fix things.

At the moment, she was annoyed with him because he’d only been over to see her four times that summer.

“You’re never around any more,” Victoire pointed out. She had her hands on her hips. “You just disappeared on me this summer.”

“I was spending time with my friends.” Teddy was nettled but managed not to scowl. He and Victoire, after all, never fought.

“I thought I was your friend.”

“You are. You’re my best friend.” He sat down next to her in the grass. They were in the orchard at the Burrow, under one of the apple trees. “It’s just I have other friends too. You’ve always been my best friend, Victoire.”

She smiled, obviously reassured, and sat down close at his side so she could lean against him. “You’re my very best friend, Teddy. Even better than Camilla.”

Camilla was one of Victoire’s Gryffindor friends. Teddy was a bit jealous of her and wished Victoire wouldn’t talk about Camilla so much.

“Okay,” he said slowly, suddenly feeling like he needed reassurance too. “Best friends forever.”

She reached over to link pinkies with him. “Forever.”

Her hand looked very small next to his. Teddy had grown three inches since the summer began, and Victoire had not really got any taller at all. What she had got was a bit rounder, especially up top.

“Best friends,” he repeated. He had been busy with his other friends and hadn’t realized until just now how much he’d missed hanging out with Victoire. “I’ll come over more often. We’ve still got a few weeks left before school. I’m sorry, Victoire.”

She gave him a sunny smile and started to climb the apple tree.

“What should I look like this year, do you think?” he asked, waiting until she was a few limbs up before starting his own ascent. “Turquoise hair again?”

“Whatever you want to look like, Teddy,” her voice floated down to him. She was concentrating on her climb, and didn’t seem to pay much attention to his question.

“But what do you want me to look like?”

“Just yourself.”

***

Year 5

Teddy unwrapped a sandwich and handed it to Victoire, then rummaged in the cooler for more. The boiling sun was beaming down on him, and sweat threatened to make his sunglasses slip right off his nose and into the cooler. Emerging with a sandwich for himself, he got comfortable beside Victoire on one of her mother’s conjured blankets.

“We should do picnics at Hogwarts this year while the weather’s still nice,” she suggested. “We can get all your friends and my friends together. Like a party.”

“I know how to get into the kitchens,” Teddy said in agreement. “My godfather gave me a little something this summer that should come in handy this year, too.” He hadn’t told anyone yet about the Marauders’ Map. His godfather had entrusted it to him only last week, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to tell any of his friends about his father’s legacy.

Except Victoire, of course, because he told her everything.

Victoire was nodding enthusiastically while she ate her sandwich. “We could take a dip in the lake and maybe conjure some floats.”

Teddy pictured a flotilla of donut-shaped floats filling the shallow edges of the lake and grinned. “That would be fun. Cold, though.”

“It’d be like one of those polar dips they do in winter,” she said with a laugh.

“Maybe we can start a Hogwarts swim team,” he suggested.

“Not with these, I can’t,” she said acerbically, tugging at the straps of her swimsuit to indicate her greatly increased size up top. “They get in the way.”

Teddy nodded judiciously. This seemed understandable. Victoire’s chest had expanded quite a bit in the last year, and her hips seemed to be following. Her newly increased feminine attributes seemed mostly an annoyance to her, and Teddy regarded the subject dispassionately. “I can see how that would be a problem. They did get big.”

“Ugh,” she agreed, and put both hands on her breasts to smush them down. “Such a pain.”

Teddy shrugged and went back to his sandwich, glad he didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing happening to him. Although...

“I wonder if I could change into a girl,” he said thoughtfully. Normally he just did funny noses, eye colors, and hair colors. Occasionally a silly chin or humorous ears. He’d never tried a full-body transformation. “I could probably do boobs, don’t you think?”

Victoire laughed. “Don’t bother,” she advised him. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth to have all this.”

“Might be funny, though.” He shelved the possibility for later. “So, train next week. I’m thinking black and gold striped hair, what do you say?”

“I sort of miss the turquoise, actually.”

Teddy concentrated for a moment, and his hair shifted from the deep brown of his natural hair to the turquoise Victoire had always favored.

She grinned and bit into her sandwich. “It suits you. But I think you look best as yourself.”

***

Year 6

“Ooh, Teddy, have a look.” Victoire plopped down on the grass next to him and showed off her current attempt at knitting. “I made a cable!”

Teddy examined the stitches. They were loose and uneven, but she had definitely managed a cable. “Nice. Gonna start knitting everyone sweaters like your gran?”

“No. Scarves, maybe.” She set the knitting down and stretched out on her belly, propping herself up on her elbows. “Can’t believe school starts on Monday. The summer went so fast.”

“It’ll be here before we know it.” 

“And we’ll be prefects together.”

Teddy grinned. “I’ll teach you how to patrol, prefects have to do late-night patrols of the castle. It’s kind of fun to be out wandering the halls. You know, _officially_.”

“I can’t wait. We can take the Marauders’ Map to help catch bullies.”

“Mostly it’s people snogging,” Teddy admitted. “Kind of embarrassing, really.”

She laughed at that. “Maybe we’ll be noisy so they have a chance to run away before we catch them.”

“We won’t catch anyone. We’ll be the most popular prefects,” Teddy joked.

They watched the younger kids playing in the back garden in companionable silence for a time, while Teddy reflected how much older they all were. No toddlers here any more. They still found it hilarious when he changed his face in funny ways. Pig noses and rabbit ears were popular for the youngest. Victoire never had a request, though.

“If you could look like anything, what would you look like?” he asked her, as he had so many times before.

“Like myself,” she answered as expected, but there was a wistfulness to her tone that hadn’t been there last time he’d asked.

Teddy looked down at his best friend lying on the grass beside him. She looked the same to him, just Victoire. She was fifteen, no taller than she had been last year so that he towered over her now, and the roundness that had started out just on top made all of her pleasantly rounded now. He thought she looked just fine, and had always thought she did, too. It made him a little worried to think maybe she didn’t like how she looked.

“Yourself is good,” he agreed, and she glanced up at him with a pleased smile.

***

Year 7

“It’s my final year, and I’m really going to go out with a bang,” Teddy declared. 

They were seated on her bed, poring over the Marauders’ Map. Teddy wanted to make sure there was no corner of the castle left unexplored when he left. And some sort of display worthy of his father’s legacy seemed in order as well, though he wasn’t sure what just yet. He’d been named Head Boy, and that sort of put a damper on his marauding. It was hard to be a bad example when you had to be a good example.

Victoire had no real ideas to contribute to the marauding, she being a rule-follower by nature. He wished she could be Head Girl beside him, ruling the school together, but of course she was too young, only in sixth year. Still, she was a prefect, just as he had been, so they had extra time to hang out because of it, doing patrols together.

“Well, I think you’ve been everywhere you could possibly go at this point,” she said, peering at the map. “Oh look, there goes Peeves, right through greenhouse three - bet Professor Longbottom just loves that-”

“If I skydive off the Astronomy Tower, will you do it with me?” Teddy asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like heights, Teddy, you know that.”

“What about something if it doesn’t involve heights? Will you help?”

“I would get caught. I can’t change my face to disguise myself like you can.”

Teddy had already considered this. “No disguises. What’s the point of doing it if no one knows who it was?”

“You’re going to get your Head Boy badge taken away for making trouble,” she pointed out.

Teddy shrugged. “Nah.”

“And if you do, you won’t be able to patrol with me any more.”

He hadn’t really thought of that aspect as part of the risk. Victoire’s eyebrows were knitted together; clearly she had given that some thought. “I’ll wait til the end of the year, then.”

“Good. I don’t want us to miss patrols. This is our last year of them.”"

“I know.” He did know, but it hadn’t really sunk in. Now he thought about it, he hated the idea. No more nights wandering the castle with Victoire, looking for troublemakers. The other prefects usually mixed up who they were paired with, but as soon as Victoire had been made prefect, Teddy had always taken her as his partner. He really didn’t like the thought of this as his last year with Victoire. “But we’re best friends for life, right?”

“Course we are.” She looked up at him with her bright brown eyes in that smiling freckled face as familiar to him as his own, her round cheeks creasing the corners of her eyes, and something tugged at his heart. She was a bit of all right, really. His best friend.

“Okay,” he said, to reassure himself. She wasn’t going anywhere. And the whole year was ahead of them still.

She held out a hand and hooked pinkies with him. “Forever, remember?”

They shook pinkies.

“Forever,” Teddy agreed.

***

The Leaving

The summer after Teddy finished Hogwarts, the summer before Victoire’s seventh year, he got a job. It was the first time he’d worked during the summer instead of hanging round Victoire and the Weasleys all the time. It seemed particularly horrible when the days were long and sunny and he was in an office, learning to file papers at the Ministry, when he knew Victoire was probably at the beach, eating sandwiches without him on her mother’s blanket. He missed her. School hadn’t been fun without her. Work wasn’t fun without her either.

So he called in sick one sunny morning and went marauding.

Victoire’s house was empty but for her younger brother Louis, who was inside doing chores because he was grounded again. Louis was often grounded. He was thirteen and had just discovered girls and the variety of trouble he could get into with them.

“She and Dominique are down on the beach,” Louis told him morosely.

“Cheers, mate,” Teddy said, and jogged away while Louis went back to his mop and bucket.

Following the trail to the ocean, he came to a stop at the edge of the grassy dunes and held up a hand to shield his eyes, scanning the beach. Bright red hair shone off to his right, side by side with the red-gold of Dominique, and Teddy veered their direction.

As he got closer, he got a better look at what Victoire was wearing. When they were on the beach together, she always wore a one-piece. He hadn’t realized she even owned any bikinis. But there she was in a pink flowered bikini, the soft pale flesh of her belly bared for all the world to see.

Not that there were very many people on the beach. It was maybe a dozen including her and her sister. Still, though. How come he hadn’t got to see this bikini of hers before?

Dominique noticed him first and waved. “Hi Teddy!”

Victoire looked round, went wide-eyed, and waved. She was frowning a bit when he got close enough to kick off his shoes and sit down beside them.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m skiving off. It’s too nice out to be at work.”

“Lazy git,” she told him good-humoredly.

Dominique hauled herself to her feet and brushed the sand off her hands. She had on a bikini too, of course. Dommie was fifteen, thinner than her sister, and spent a lot of days in bikinis, but this did not interest Teddy in the least. “I’m going to go cool off. You want to come?”

Victoire shook her head. “Not yet.”

As soon as Dominique was out of earshot, Teddy asked, gesturing at Victoire’s bikini, “How come I’ve never seen that swimsuit? Is it new?”

Victoire looked down at the bikini. “No. It doesn’t really fit me that well, so I don’t usually wear it. It makes me look fat.”

“What do you mean? It looks all right to me.”

She poked at her waist. “It gives me a horrible muffin top, don’t you think?”

Teddy examined her figure, but there was nothing objectionable about her that he could see. “Looks fine to me.”

“You’re just saying that cause you’re my friend.”

Teddy was still examining her body, and a hot feeling came over him that had nothing to do with friendship and everything to do with the delightful way she spilled over the bikini top just a bit. “I suppose it’s a little small up top.”

She glanced down at her breasts. “Yeah, they’re a pain, I told you.”

He tore his gaze away, staring at the water instead and feeling deeply unsure of himself. Maybe he should have gone to work. Maybe he should sneak another look at the pink flowered bikini top. Maybe she wasn’t _just_ his best friend any more. He was suddenly extremely aware that he was feeling a little more urge to get her bikini top off than _just_ friends ought to feel.

But it was Victoire. She was his best friend, his person, the one person in the world for Teddy. She was the only person to whom he told everything, all his secrets, the first person he wanted to talk to when something happened, the person he wanted to spend all his free time with, the person he’d always pictured side by side with him his entire life. And she looked damn good in a pink flowered bikini that was just a little too small.

“Teddy?”

He looked round. She was looking at him strangely.

“When I ask you how I should look, you always say myself,” he blurted out.

She blinked. “I like how yourself looks.”

“I like how yourself looks too.”

“I wish myself was thinner,” she said, and he heard that same wistfulness he’d heard before from her.

“Is that what you would change, if you could?” He had often wondered if she really meant that she only would look like herself.

Victoire shrugged. “Like myself, but thin. Yeah.”

Teddy had a strong sense of sympathy for her usual answer to him of _just yourself_. That was how he wanted Victoire. Just herself. Just Victoire. “You look great. I love how you look. You should wear that bikini more often.”

She looked down at it, then back up at him. Her expression was changed now, and he didn’t know what she was thinking, but she only said his name in a whisper. “Teddy?”

“You’re my favorite person.” It felt like the most true thing he’d ever said in his life. She was still his best friend, of course she was, but maybe they were something more than best friends now too. Maybe they had been for a while and hadn’t realized it.

“You’re my favorite person too.” She smiled at him, the corners of her eyes crinkling rather adorably, and without thinking about what he was doing, Teddy leaned forward and kissed her.

For a moment she froze, but then she tilted her face and kissed him back, curious at first and then growing bolder.

When he broke the kiss, they stared at each other, bemused.

“Teddy?” she said in a whisper.

“Victoire...” He didn’t know how to explain it, the sudden shift, and hoped she felt it too. “You really are my favorite person. I love you.”

She tipped her head to one side and smiled at him. “I love you too, Teddy.”


End file.
